The Alley (3 page)

Then, the minute the truck went out, the gates were locked again. This made the Alley safe. The children couldn't get out of the Alley, and no wicked people could get in. There had been two burglaries in the Alley, though—one in the end house on Larrabee, the house of the Bernadettes, who had no children, and the other in the house of the Langs, who had no children, either. But the burglars did not get in through the Alley; they got in through the front doors. They just broke down the doors when no one was home, went in, and took what they wanted. These burglaries were long ago, historic burglaries, rarely spoken of now, mainly forgotten.

But sometimes, when she was swinging, Connie thought about those burglaries. From the swing she could glimpse the police station, a medieval-looking building—Precinct Number 9999. With all the houses torn down next to the Alley to make room for the athletic field, the police of Precinct 9999 could see the little houses in the Alley and foil a burglary now.

Even so, "Never leave the outer green door open," Papa always said. "Leaving it open is an invitation to burglars," he said. "They can get inside the outer green door, close it behind them, and then easily break down the inner door, with no one being able to see what they are doing. Always keep that outer green door locked!" Papa repeatedly warned Connie, Mama, Nanny—everybody. Still, Nanny often would keep the outer door open—she just would. "For the mailman," she said, so he would not have so much trouble getting her Chester, South Carolina, paper in the slot—it was too big, it and the Sunday
State
, to squeeze through the small mail slot in the outer door. "Tear them to shreds," said Nanny. "Tear them all to shreds." The Chester
Reporter
and the Columbia
State
were like home to Nanny. Then, the minute the mailman left, she tried to remember to lock the outer green door, not to be inviting burglars, as Papa said.

"Don't you worry, child," she'd say to Papa. (Though he was forty-eight, she still called him "child.") "No burglar is coming in while I am here."

Connie wondered if Nanny would think to use the tall Tiffany vase, which stood on the little marble-top table near the front door, to bop a burglar over the head with if one did break in. Connie doubted it. The vase was a famous one, given to Nanny at the time of her marriage by her dear friend, Becky Coker, Charleston, South Carolina. If a burglar appeared at the front door, Connie decided that Nanny, probably on account of the sentiment, would not use the Tiffany vase in this way. What would Nanny do in case of burglars? She would scream, probably, just scream. How Nanny could scream! She would scare the burglars away with just one scream, that's what Connie thought. In sorrow and in joy, Nanny was apt to scream; and when Micky Mantle hit a homer, you could hear her way down at the Carrolls' end house, for she loved the drama in life.

Opposite the Carrolls', next to the other iron gate, there lived an artist named Joe Below—nicknamed, Bully Vardeer. This artist had painted the portrait of almost every child in the Alley and of one or two out-of-the-ordinary-looking grownups. Katy Starr's father was one, because of his beard, and the President of Grandby College was another, painted with hand on stomach, mortar board on head—its tassel over his executive eye. If you were led blindfolded into any of the little houses and then allowed to take a look, you could tell which house you were in by the Bully Vardeer painting on the wall. The nickname "Bully Vardeer" stemmed from the French word
boulevardier,
meaning an artist who strolls along the boulevards near the River Seine in Paris, stopping to talk now and then with a fellow artist or a model, sipping an
apéritif
at a sidewalk café, and then sauntering on. Bully Vardeer had a jaunty, swinging sort of stride, wore his hat carelessly on the back of his head, and kept his hands in his pockets. It was Mama who said he looked like a
boulevardier
from the description Papa had given her of
boulevardiers.
Papa knew, having been to Paris in his youth. Mama had not been to Paris. But why go anywhere, living with someone who described things as well as Papa? Connie had thought
boulevardier
was a name—Bully Vardeer—and she called Mr. Joe Below by that nickname. Now, Billy Maloon and Hugsy—all the children and even some of the grownups—called him Bully Vardeer.

These two houses by the iron gates—the Carrolls' and Bully Vardeer's—had no windows on their red brick Alley side, so their walls were excellent for bouncing balls against—the Carrolls and Bully Vardeer did not like that—and for writing on with chalk—the Carrolls and Bully Vardeer did not like that, either. When the four little Carrolls got a little older, they would probably begin writing in chalk on good places like their wall, too. Then their mother would have to yell at them, not at Arnold and June and Connie and Katy—some of the present chalk writers. "Who likes to read all those white and pink and blue chalk marks, such as the mark of Zorro and others?" Mrs. Carroll demanded. Children did not mind the writing on the wall; in fact, they pored over all the interesting news, as to who loved whom and who hated whom—Arnold had written his in Latin, H.G.
amat
C.I. But the grownups did mind, and once Connie and June Arp had to wash the writing off the Carrolls' wall. This was not fair, because Connie had put only one word on it—"Connie." "But that's life," she thought.

No one could live in this Alley except people who worked at Grandby College. That was fair, since the houses on the Alley belonged to this college. "Faculty houses," they were called. Everyone in Grandby College pined to live in one of the little houses. But there were not enough for all, and you had to get on a waiting list. Sometimes outsiders, children, looked through the gates and watched the children inside for a while, and then they'd rush away saying, "Poor things, they're locked up."

"It's as though we're in a zoo," said Connie to Hugsy Goode, age nine, and in P.S. 2, like Billy Maloon. The name of Connie's school was Morrison.

"Yeah," agreed Hugsy. "Once I heard a kid say—I think he was a Gregory Avenue kid (Gregory Avenue was the name of the street outside the campus that ran along the athletic field)—I heard this guy say, 'There are tunnels under these houses, and they go from house to house.'"

"You did!" exclaimed Connie. "Do you think that is true?"

"No," said Hugsy, "because I looked in my cellar and in Billy's for secret trap doors. None! None at all! We tapped every inch. Mrs. Trickman thought we were burglars—called the police..."

Connie was disappointed about the tunnels. "Are you sure?" she asked. "You know there might be, there really might be tunnels." They both liked to think there might be and that one of them would be the discoverer of a tunnel, leading from Connie's house to Hugsy's, Billy's—or even to outside.

You might think the Alley was too small a place to have much fun in. That was not so. Ask any of the thirty-three children who lived there, and they would all say that was not so, even Anthony Bigelow, a small, bold new boy. The Alley was big enough for any game, even for sledding. Once, though, Connie had had a flying dream. In this dream she had flown out of her bedroom window, over her garden, over her fence, and down the Alley—not going high, just high enough to clear the grapevines on the Carrolls' fence—and then flying, like swimming in the air, around the corner to the iron gate. But when she reached the gate, she could not fly over it. She tried and tried, but she could not make it. She woke up, still trying to get out and over the gate. Perhaps she had wanted to fly out of the Alley, fly all over Brooklyn and even over the Brooklyn Bridge. Did that mean she really wanted to fly out of Brooklyn? Fly back to Washington where she used to live? "Of course," she often used to say to Hugsy, Billy, or to anyone who would listen, "Brooklyn is not as beautiful as Washington. How could it be? That is the most beautiful city in the world. Still, Brooklyn is beautiful, too. It's quaint," she said.

Naturally, when the Ives first moved to Brooklyn, Connie had been homesick. But now, swinging high on this perfect May day, her heart brimming with joy, Connie thought with astonishment of those lonely first days. It was a little train busily making its way up the elevated tracks on Myrtle Avenue that reminded Connie now of them. Well, she had been only six then. Naturally she had missed beautiful Washington and her friend, Clarissa, who had practically lived with her, was practically a sister to her there. Connie listened to the little train go rumbling along. She couldn't see it from here, how it looked, like a little toy train; but she could hear it, saying, "Hello, Connie. Good-by, Connie!"

"The little train saved my life," she thought. "The Myrtle Avenue El."

"The Myrtle Avenue El," Papa said when they moved here, "is the very last elevated train in New York City! It will soon be torn down, too, I hear." But it was still up, it had not been torn down yet, and maybe it never would be. Maybe it would be kept as a souvenir of bygone days of old New York. "Save? For a souvenir? New York save anything? Why, they are talking of tearing down the house where Walt Whitman printed 'Leaves of Grass'! That's how they save in New York City!" shouted Papa.

Well, luckily the El was still up when the Ives moved here. Every day for the first few weeks, the minute Connie came home from school, she and Mama used to get on the little train and ride to the end of the line. Raining or shining, windy or what, it did not matter. The thought of the little train helped Connie to get through the long day in her new, big, strange Brooklyn school. She and Mama would climb the steep stairs up to the platform, and, no matter what the weather, they would stand outside rather than in the stale-smelling waiting room. They could see through the cracks of the wooden platform to the cars and people below; and looking way down the straight, silvery tracks, they could see the train come rollicking and swaying along—making their platform tremble, shudder, and steel itself for the swift onrush of the train—here now, at last, cheerful, inviting, and calm.

Usually, at that time of day, there were few people on the train; it was practically a private train. Sometimes Connie, her mother, the motorman, and the conductor would be the only ones on it. Jogging along, it was strange being able to look into people's second-story windows and onto the roofs where the pigeons were kept. Sometimes a man or a boy let his pigeons out to fly; and then when the train returned, the pigeons would be back in their little houses on the rooftops. "How did they know where to go?" wondered Connie. One man had chickens, real alive chickens—white Bantams they were, who squawked when the train went by and fluttered their wings.

Many houses, blocks and blocks of them along Myrtle Avenue, were being torn down to make way for new, big apartment buildings. The old, torn-down houses had no fronts to them any more; they were like rows and rows of huge dollhouses, or houses for stage settings that have no fronts to them, so that you can see in, see the characters inside. But these no-front houses had no characters inside any more, only rooms that had been lived in once and would never be lived in again. You could see the different colors the rooms had been painted and the different wallpapers. Some of the rooms were pale pink or blue or bright green; some were even purple. Others were coral or salmon. Perhaps, before their fronts had been ripped off, these houses might have looked awful—slums. But now with their ancient, crumbling wallpapers, they looked pretty to Connie as she and Mama went swiftly by.

They always went to the end of the line. Perhaps Connie hoped that the train would take her back to Washington, to drawing pictures there with Clarissa, to taking walks there with Mama, past the big and lovely ginkgo trees, smelling the violets and picking them—they grew right along the brick sidewalks and in between the bricks, practically everywhere, there, in Washington.

One day, however, walking home from the little train, Connie said to Mama, "You know, Mama, I don't think Washington is so beautiful any more, now that I'm not in it."

Mama agreed. "Yes," she said. "I think you are right."

In the nighttime, you could see the little train from Mama's bedroom window, prettily lighted; and in the nighttime—in the clear night crispness—the little train, lulling Connie, singing, "Hello, Connie. Good-by, Connie," reminded her still of Washington. But it was like a song remembered, part of a long-ago life. Life now was different. Now, they were living in the Alley, in one of the little Alley houses. Now Connie didn't miss Washington any more. She loved it here in the Alley. She never wanted to leave here.

Billy Maloon, who was Connie's age, a boy with large, sad hazel eyes, used to walk past Connie's gate in the Alley while she was swinging. He wouldn't turn his head to look at her, and she wouldn't turn her head to look at him. He would turn his eyes, though, to see her, just his eyes, and she would turn her eyes, just her eyes, not her head, to see him. Sometimes he would seem about to stop. But then he would go on up to his end of the Alley, to his house, climb over his fence, and go in. And Connie would go into her house and read to herself or to Mama.

Connie had many friends in the Alley. One was Judy Fabadessa, age ten, too, and in her class at school. But Judy was not another Clarissa—she would never take the place of Clarissa. Everyone in the Alley knew about Clarissa and Connie in Washington, the great friends they had been. You might say that Clarissa shone in their thoughts the way she did in Connie's. Still, Judy and Connie did become friends, and at first Judy came to Connie's house every day. Judy liked to swing and to sled and to play in the deep snow, and so did Connie. Sometimes she and Connie and their mothers went ice-skating at Rockefeller Plaza. Connie and Judy laughed a lot, they gasped, they couldn't stop laughing. But sometimes Judy would turn her back on Connie and attach herself to the big girls—her sister Laura, Katy Starr, a very important girl in the Alley, the maker of its laws, and June Arp, the girl next door.